Friends Who Are Going

Friends Attending

Friends Attending

Friends Attending

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Join us in the fight to end female genital mutilation (FGM) for a wonderful day of yoga, sound and meditation in one of the most beautiful settings in the North West of England, "The Gathering Fields".

Our charity, Beyond FGM works in a remote part of north west Kenya, Pokot, where FGM practice prevails in remote villages where the people are marginalised and poverty stricken. Very few , if any NGO,s ever go to these remote places to deliver the necessary education and empowerment for the practice to be abolished.

We at beyond FGM are proud of our success thus far as we have achieved a lot with very little in a relatively short space of time.

This is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to join the fight against this horrific, long out dated practice.

We are a purely grassroots movement, all volunteers and constantly struggling for money to fund our activities.

The main arm of our approach involves conducting an Alternative Rite of Passage ceremony (ARP) for girls aged between around 12-16 years of age, the age at which they would normally have their genitals cut as a rite of passage into womanhood. The girls are then usually married off to a much older man (not of their choosing) , drop out of school and begin the hard life of constant child bearing and harsh primitive living conditions.

Much community mobilisation goes on prior to the ARP, e.g.training Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA,s), many of whom are also the cutters. We visit the villages to conduct sensitisation and awareness raising amongst the whole community and aim to have local committees formed. This way the people themselves own the process and become involved in creating the ARP ceremony.

ARP,s involve bringing the girls together for a week of training around all the issues involved, i.e.negative health consequences of FGM both at the time and especailly during childbirth, their human rights to a life free from inhumane degrading treatment, bodily integrity, education etc.

At the end of the week, a big public ceremony is conducted to demonstrate to the community at large the altered status of the girls, that they are now responsible young women but obviously no cutting of their genitals involved. They are now free to continue education and choose their own path in life.

However in the most remote areas girls are often forced or coerced into FGM and forced to be married.

We are therefore also fund raising to build a rescue centre/safe house for all those girls trying to escape.

To date we have empowered close to 3000 girls to refuse FGM and subsequent "marriage"!

To see more of our work please visit www.beyondfgm.co.uk

Click on this link to watch the award winning Guardian film "I Will Never be Cut" to see our first ever ARP in 2010.

It is only because of people like yourselves who are joining us on this our first ever yoga-thon that we have been able to continue the fight to #endfgm #togethertoendfgm #togethertoendchildmarriage